What Can We Do? (Part 2)

(return to part 1)

The question really is, “How do we stem the tide of falling interest and declining numbers?”

The last decade saw the rise of the mega church movement. Some churches now boast Sunday morning attendance figures in the thousands. How are they doing it?

John F. MacArthur, Jr. has written an excellent book that really speaks to our question. The title is: Ashamed of the Gospel (When The Church Becomes Like The World). Obviously, I would not endorse everything in his book, but there is much of value in it. On its pages the author decries the trend toward pragmatism. That means that churches should pay far less attention to doctrine, and far more attention to what people want.

MacArthur writes: “Traditional methodology–most notably preaching–is being discarded or downplayed in favor of newer means, such as drama, dance, comedy, variety, side-show histrionics, pop-psychology, and other entertainment forms. The new methods supposedly are more “effective”–that is, they draw a bigger crowd. And since for many the chief criterion for gauging the success of a church has become attendance figures, whatever pulls in the most people is accepted without critical analysis as good. That is pragmatism” (pg. xiii).

Clearly affluence, numbers, money, or positive responses have never been the biblical measure of success in ministry. If these things were what was really important some of God’s greatest servants, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, would be judged abject failures, but God certainly did not see it that way.

Paul wrote to Timothy: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:1-5).

As MacArthur correctly points out in his book, Timothy was commanded:

1) to be faithful in his preaching of biblical truth;
2) to be bold in exposing and refuting error;
3) to be an example of godliness to the flock;
4) to be diligent and work hard in the ministry;
5) to be willing to suffer hardship and persecution in his service for the Lord (pg. 27).

Dale Jenkins said it quite well in a recent chapel talk at Freed-Hardeman. We advertise “the get without the give, the gain without the pain.” Real discipleship demands real sacrifice. We will never be the people God calls His church to be until we are more interested in how much we can give, and not how much we can get. Faithful Christians will not demand “serve us”, but they will consecrate their lives to service. We still believe in the sovereignty of God, the power of the gospel, the authority of Scripture, and the salvation (not entertainment) of souls.

–Roger